Kids VT Blog

The Baby Name Game

We're all focused on babies this month here at Kids VT. Not only did we just publish our May Baby & Maternity issue, but we're also expecting a bunch of new additions to our Seven Days-Kids VT staff family. The wives of two of our staff writers are expecting (actually, one of them delivered last week!), one of our proofreaders is due soon, and two employees on the sales side of our company are due this summer.

Not surprisingly, the subject of baby names comes up quite a bit around the water cooler.

One of our expectant writer-papas just forwarded me this nifty website called The Baby Name Wizard, which lets you do all kinds of crazy searches. You can use it to research names and track baby-name popularity. It's pretty sweet.

The Baby Name Wizard has a state-by-state breakdown of baby names, which is also data you can find on the Social Security Administration website, though the SSA doesn't present it nearly as prettily. Interestingly, I just read a report that mentions the Baby Name Wizard on the NPR website. The NPR story claims that baby names are the latest partisan divide. Interestingly, it leads with a couple sentences about Burlington, Vermont! Apparently, we're more conservative up here than our red-state counterparts when it comes to baby names. The Baby Name Wizard founder posits that's because blue-state moms are older when they give birth, and therefore less adventurous.

What do you think? What baby names have you heard around here lately? I suddenly know a whole bunch of Henrys. And more than two young Griffins. We thought Ivy was really original back in 2008, but now it's apparently one of the most popular names of the year.